Well all the pro video cameras, that are still consumer aren't USB at all so they made a mistake in not having firewire, and firewire is a much better connection for video anyway as it's a constant rate instead of a changeable rate which usb is.

Actually, there is no such thing as usb2 to firewire cable, or adapter. They are not compatible, in any way

So true .... you can't even buy a dongle/gadget/black box that converts between the two

The writing is on the wall. No firewire ports today, no firewall OS support in the future. Apple continues to dictate what we want. And as complete fools, we bend over and say ..... one more time please !!! Vote your dissatisfaction with your wallet.

people who edit video professionally want firewire ports. people with external hard drives want firewire ports because firewire is MUCH faster than usb 2.0. professional and students involved in video editing will be very disappointed/ disinterested in a macbook with the power of mac pro incapable of interfacing with pro video equipment. im not even sure you can capture video with usb 2.0 in final cut pro. it was just a bad decision all around.

ive gotta say i have never used the firewire port but if it is faster then why would apple take it out and why does everyone use usb? this makes absolutely no sense. and i agree with skatertrash there are some kids in my school that are in to movie editing and all they use is firewire.

This forces me to have to get a much more pricey macbook pro for my next laptop instead of a macbook as I'm sure is part of the reason they took firewire out of the macbooks. I don't do anything video related just yet but there is no way I'm doing transfers over USB... USB to put it simply.... sux.
USB has always proven to be unreliable when transferring large files are a large amount of files. Firewire on the other hand has always blown large files away or a large number of files. I mean I can transfer 30 gigs no problem in a matter of minutes with Firewire but USB takes a LONG TIME and even then some of the files end up being corrupt or the transfer stops all together. Firewire FTW... plus unless they allow target disk mode over USB, Firewire is a must... and even if they do allow target disk mode over USB... I wouldn't trust it.

**OFF TOPIC** The crazier thing than the firewire is the whole mini display port thing... I mean what the heck? I want that new monitor but my barely 1 year old Mac Pro can't even use it...

I have a M-AUDIO FireWire 410 (semi-pro external audio i/o device).
It is designed to be "do music on the go". Newer, better one - FireWire 610 has been introduced few weeks ago. Both still use FW !ONLY!

I have all the macs around and i've planned to buy a new macbook...
So what now? MBP or competition?

Despite the fact, that i became an apple fan - **** happens, apple! =(

sziklassy

I disagree. It does not. The fastest ones are always optional and for additional charge higher, than in competiting products. GPU's arent the fastest at all.

I agree though, that apple low-end is mostly "high-ender" than the competiting mid level products.

You hit the nail on the head for me!

While i don't use anything firewire, my wife happens to be into audio production, and uses a focusrite LE interface, very similar to your m-audio 410.

The thing about firewire is that it has a 12 volt bus and can power the interface, unfortunately for her she is running an HP DV9000 series laptop and there is no way to power her interface without a wallwort power supply.

As it stands, there are no way to get power from a laptop that only has a 4 pin firewire. Even the PCMCIA cards wont power it.

She prefers Macs over P.C's and we were thinking of getting her back into a mac and the new ones looked like the way to go.

But now, if they aren't supporting firewire on them it looks like we are going to have to nix that idea.

To comment on USB vs Firewire, sure there is speed differences, but considering that both are pretty fast, your not going to notice that great of a difference.

A couple of seconds? Probably, but Minutes? I doubt it. I've transferred gigs back and forth over both, and have never really noticed any greater or lesser speeds.

At least nothing for me to get excited over...

Originally Posted by czarnachmura28

I used adapter long time ago , from fire 400 to usb.just go to any pro video store its only 10-25 $

there aren't cables that do this, but there are Hubs that can do the job.

You can buy a PCMCIA card for laptops that will have both 4 pin and 6 pin plugs in them, but they wont power the device.

SERBIAN
If you "googled" for the keyphrase "firewire to usb adaptor", then you should have also googled for the thing itself.
This usb to 4pin firewire is not a cable, nor adaptor. It works under XP only. In order to make it work you need to install driver and software.
Therefore, it is a UBS device, that has FW 4-pin connector.
And giving the fact, it works under XP only, it is absolutely useless for mac.